Upon A Different Stair
by Anna Marchen
Summary: The first time Kurt and Blaine met, they were kids, and Kurt was hurt, and Blaine was hyper, and Cooper was extremely patient. Of course neither of them remember it.


_If you recognise it, it's not mine._

* * *

Kurt Hummel had been given a bike for his birthday. It was the best bike he could imagine, with a little basket and tassels on the handlebars. He begged to be allowed to ride it straight away, but his dad laughed and told him to wait until the weekend. Reluctantly, Kurt had agreed, and had gone off to school with his Tinkerbell rucksack slung over his skinny shoulders. But as promised, Burt had given him his very first cycling lesson that weekend, complete with stabilisers and enough protective clothing to cover a small football player. At first, Kurt wasn't really very good at it. He couldn't get his legs to move in the right way, and when he did, he couldn't find the brakes in time to stop himself from ploughing up a patch of flowers. His mom had frowned slightly and suggested that he came inside before he could hurt himself, but Kurt was stubborn and insisted on practising and practising, round and round the driveway until he pulled to a shaky stop outside the door and scampered inside for lemonade and leftover birthday cake. The next day, while his dad was at work and his mom was organising the laundry, Kurt slipped out of the house. The bike was where he had left it, a layer of dew covering the saddle. He wiped it off with his sleeve and began pedalling round the drive again, singing to himself as he did. Elizabeth looked out of the window and smiled as she watched the boy cycling round, seemingly happy to play on his own. Turning away, she went into the kitchen to make a start on lunch. Kurt went round the drive a few more times before he was stopped by a call from the road.

"Your bike looks stupid."

Kurt dragged his heels on the ground to make himself stop faster. "No, it doesn't," he objected, plucking at the sleeve of his jumper.

David Karofsky, a boy in the same class as Kurt at school, smirked at him. "Yeah, it is. It looks like a girl's bike. Why do you have a girl's bike?"

"It's not a girl's bike," Kurt said, glaring at the other boy. David just laughed. "It's not!" Kurt yelled, stamping his foot. The action made him wobble, and he quickly climbed off the bike.

Elizabeth opened an upstairs window. "Kurt, why are you shouting? Remember, good little boys play nicely."

"Mom, he was-"

"Hi, Mrs Hummel, how are you?" David interrupted charmingly. Elizabeth smiled at him. "Hello, David. Are you coming to play with Kurt? That's very nice, isn't it, Kurt? If you play on his bike, don't go out on the road, remember?" She waved at them and closed the window. David instantly sneered at Kurt, leaning on the fence.

"I bet you can't ride your stupid bike on the road," he said, staring at the tassels on the handlebars. Kurt's pale cheeks turned pink. "I can ride my bike on the road. Me and my dad and my brothers ride our bikes to school sometimes. But I bet you can't ride your bike on the road," he taunted.

Kurt glanced back at the house. His mom had told him not to play on the road without an adult to keep an eye on him.

"You can't ride your bike on the road because only boys do that. _Girls_ have to stay in their gardens," David said, pointing at Kurt's tea set neatly set out on the doorstep.

Kurt squared his shoulders. "I'm a boy. I can ride my bike on the road if I want to."

"Do it then," David said. Kurt hesitated, looking back at the house nervously. "Or are you too scared, like a silly girl?"

Kurt carefully wheeled his bike down to the gate, unhooking it quickly before his mom saw him or he changed his mind. David stepped back as Kurt swung one little leg over the saddle, and began to move. Slowly at first, but gaining speed, he headed towards the corner. David smirked, and ran in the other direction, back to his house. With any luck, Kurt would get in trouble for being on the road on his own. Even his oldest brother, Mark, who was nearly ten, wasn't allowed out completely on his own yet.

* * *

Kurt cycled happily down the street. He didn't see why his mom wouldn't let him do this before. The thought of his mom made him glance back up the street. His house was disappearing round the corner. Still looking backwards, Kurt didn't notice that the street had begun to slope downwards. Picking up speed, he wobbled down the hill. Kurt forgot to pedal in fear. His hand scrabbled for the brakes, but he couldn't find them. An unusually large pebble sitting in the road proved to be the final straw. The front wheel hit it, jolting horribly, just as Kurt's hand squeezed the brake. The bike skidded sideways into the hedge of the last house on the street, flinging the small passenger roughly into the gate with a shriek. Kurt landed awkwardly, body sprawled over the concrete steps. The first thing he noticed was that his arm really hurt. He tried to move it, and it hurt more. "Mommy?" he called quietly, eyes flickering. Then he saw what looked like red paint smudged on his arm, and on the steps, and on the knee of his new blue shorts. Kurt's mouth opened to scream, but his eyes rolled back in his head. Everything went black.

* * *

"Boo! Boo, come here! Boo! Good boy, Boo! _Good boy_!" The black labrador scampered in happy circles round Blaine's feet, tripping him over. The pair fell in a mess of fur and small boy in the hall. Blaine's big brother, Cooper, stepped over them, rolling his eyes.

"Take him out to play in the garden, B. He's got too much energy."

Blaine wriggled to his feet, tugging on Boo's collar eagerly. "Okay!"

"I was talking to the dog!" Cooper called back from the kitchen. Blaine's forehead furrowed in confusion for a second, then he grabbed Boo's favourite rope toy and ran for the door, the dog following him with a loud bark. When he got outside, Blaine threw the toy across the grass. Boo charged after it, dropping it at Blaine's feet quickly. Blaine threw it again, but this time Boo ran over to the gate and started sniffing at it.

"Boo, the toy's over here, look. Boo!" He stamped his little foot as the dog ignored him, barking at the gate instead. Annoyed, Blaine knelt down next to him, peering through the wooden slats to see what was so interesting.

Then he screamed, running back inside as fast as he could. _"Cooper! Cooper! Boo found a dead person! Cooper!" _

His brother stepped into the hall. Blaine ran straight into him, sobbing in terror, hands flailing. One caught him in the stomach. "Ow! What the hell, Blaine!"

Blaine kept crying, pointing at the door. Cooper could hear Boo barking madly, so he picked his hysterical little brother up and walked over to the gate. Boo whimpered anxiously as they approached, pressing his nose against the wood. Sighing, Cooper unhooked the gate.

And swore. Blaine took one look at the steps and buried his face in Cooper's shoulder. "There's a _dead person_ on our steps, Coop! Make it go away!"

Cooper nudged Blaine onto the grass, telling him to hold onto Boo. Then he tentatively knelt next to the small body. He was breathing, though his pulse was fluttering like a rabbit's, light and fast. There was a lot of blood, most of it coming from a deep looking scrape on the little boy's head. Cooper tugged his thin sweater off, balling it up and pressing it to the injury. The boy didn't look much younger than Blaine. A lot smaller though. Out of the corner of his eye, Cooper could see a bike stuck in the hedge. A tattered streamer blew over the boy's leg. Suddenly wide eyes opened in the pale face, blue and green and grey and frightened all at once.

"Hey, kid," Cooper said softly, leaning over the boy. He gently placed a hand under his head, sitting him up against the gatepost. The little boy burst into tears. At the sound, Boo raced round the corner, dragging Blaine with him. The boy cried out, flinching away with a sob of pain. Cooper caught him before he could fall.

"Woah, kid. That's a bad cut you've got there. Sit still, okay?"

_"...dizzy..."_

Blaine crawled over to the boy, pushing Boo back into the garden. "You're not dead," he stated, sounding slightly disappointed as well as worried. The boy blinked up at him, tears mixing with the blood smeared on his cheeks.

"I'm Blaine," he continued. "What's your name?"

"Kurt." His voice was little more than a whisper, and his eyelids were flickering worryingly.

"Hi, Kurt. Your arm looks all weird. Why are you on our steps? Ooh, you're bleeding. See?"

Cooper caught his arm as he reached out to poke Kurt's head. "Kurt? Hey, kid, stay awake, ok?" He snapped his fingers in front of the boy's face. Kurt blinked sleepily. "Where do you live?"

"Up the street...number six..." Kurt mumbled painfully. His little eyes slid shut. Cooper swore again.

"That's a bad word, Coop," Blaine said reprovingly.

"Blaine, go up to number six, get Kurt's parents, ok?"

"But-"

"Go!"

Blaine ran off up the street, shoes slapping on the pavement as Boo ran after him. Cooper turned back to the unconscious boy in his arms, pressing the bundle of jumper to his head again. Kurt's arm was bent at a sickeningly wrong angle. Definitely broken. Cooper shifted him in his arms, trying to take some of the weight off the limb.

A few minutes later, Blaine came panting back down the hill. A pretty woman in a white sundress and flip-flops, brown hair tied back in a long plait, sprinted in front of him. She dropped to her knees beside Cooper, gasping at the blood spread over the stone.

"Oh no. Oh, _god_, Kurt, _please_..." She turned to Cooper, bright eyes shiny with tears. Cooper explained what he knew. She was panicked and frantic, so Cooper offered to carry him up to her car. She nodded gratefully, and Cooper gathered the little boy up and started walking as gently as he could. Blaine shut Boo in the house and caught up, chattering away.

"So, what's your name?"

"You can call me Mrs Hummel, I guess."

"I'm Blaine, and that's my brother Cooper. He's in charge of me because mom and dad have taken Grandma shopping, because she usually lives here but we're staying with her because our house is all packed away. I'm eight. I go to Westerbrook Elementary, and we're moving to Westerbrook next week, aren't we, Coop?"

"And that's _enough_ from you, okay?"

When they got to the car, Cooper gently lowered Kurt into the seat. He offered to come with her, but Mrs Hummel thanked him and said that her husband was going to meet them at the hospital. Blaine bounced impatiently as they drove away, wanting to go home and play again. Within a week, he'd forgotten the whole incident, as children do, caught up in the excitement of moving house, and when he met a beautiful, slim boy on a staircase, many years later, he didn't recognise him at all.

Cooper managed to get the bike out of the hedge, leaning it against the wall of Kurt's house. He didn't think about it again, but when Blaine came out at the age of thirteen, he did think of that very flamboyant bike, and the boy who owned it. He didn't recognise Kurt until at least fifteen years later, when he and Blaine and a few others were helping Kurt clear out the junk in a storage unit, and an old, tasselled bike was propped against the wall.

Kurt went back to school with a thick cast on his arm and stitches in his head. He didn't remember anything which had happened, due to a mild concussion. He had been told that he fell off his bike, and that some nice boys helped him, but he never knew anything more.

And so two boys met for the second time as strangers.

And the rest, as they say, is history.


End file.
